Nas Solutions

Synology today unveiled the public release of their new NAS operating system. DiskStation Manager (DSM) v6.1 has been in testing for a new months but becomes available for all to download today.

The latest iteration of the software focuses on enhanced security and ease of use, with a range of new under the hood and user-taregted features available for modern Synology NAS servers. Here’s a run down of what’s new:

Active Directory Server: Transform your Synology NAS to serve as a domain controller and streamline IT maintenance by creating policies to automatically install certain software or system updates on all of your employees’ computers without having to visit each one individually.

Shared folder encryption: Encrypt pre-existing shared folders, including the homes folder, whenever you need. For higher security and convenience, you can now mount encrypted folders automatically using a physical USB flash drive without having to memorize encryption keys.

Seagate IronWolf Health Management (IHM): Synology has partnered with Seagate to exclusively bring Seagate’s IronWolf Health Management tool to NAS products. With intelligent analysis and user-actionable information, the status of IronWolf and IronWolf Pro hard drives on Synology NAS with DSM 6.1 and above can be closely monitored, keeping users’ data continuously safeguarded. Matt Rutledge, senior vice president of storage at Seagate, commented, “The Seagate and Synology partnership is raising the bar for NAS storage even further. Seagate’s IronWolf NAS-optimized specialty drives and IronWolf Health Management is one of many steps by Seagate and Synology to deliver the best possible NAS user experience.”

New Apps:Synology Universal Search: A powerful search tool (Ctrl + F) that helps users find everything including multimedia/applications on their Synology NAS and offers quick preview into file contents and metadata with just one click.

USB Copy 2.0: For those who often store data on USB drives, USB Copy is a convenient tool that allows users to back up files to or from a Synology NAS by simply plugging in a USB storage device. The customizable rules allow users to specify exactly which folders should be copied.

Synology High Availability: When deploying a high-availability cluster, Synology High Availability supports running S.M.A.R.T. tests and enabling SSD TRIM on both of the servers, and allows users to add a quorum server to effectively reduce the occurrence of split-brain, thus maximizing service continuity and data consistency.

Virtual DSM Manager: The beta release allows users to seamlessly migrate virtual instances of DSM between two Synology NAS while keeping data stored on a third machine in order to avoid service downtime. In addition, by leveraging snapshot technologies available on Btrfs volumes, Virtual DSM Manager can clone and restore entire machines within seconds.
More great features: The advanced NAS operating system also introduces RAID F1 for XS-series and SMB 4.4 upgrade for sparse file support.